


Growout

by schwarmerei1



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Haircuts, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:39:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5480171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schwarmerei1/pseuds/schwarmerei1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toast wants to be a better version of herself. Some hero worship of Furiosa may be involved.</p><p>A gift for gloomygnu as part of Mad Max Secret Santa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growout

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: The unnamed Vuvalini have been given names based on those of the actresses portraying them, so I hope you can guess which character I am referring to.
> 
> Thanks very much to thebyrchentwigges aka Tyellas and Scarlet for their assistance in beta reading.

They have ascended with the Wretched, they have taken the Citadel. But even in victory they all have losses to remember. Toast is grateful there is too much that is urgent to leave energy for thinking.

Gilly and Mel, the two Vuvalini, have quietly taken charge of the place, even though Furiosa is the leader in the eyes of the Citadel inhabitants. Furiosa is still alive, but Toast knows that it is a miracle she can even stand upright. Right now she needs food and water and rest. Not unshackling bloodbags, liberating breeders, and convening a council for a new Citadel.

So the days are busy -- busy taking inventory of resources; busy preparing for the assault they know must be coming from whatever is left of the War Parties.

There are joys unlooked for. Like at dusk two days later when a plume of dust clears to reveal Smithy on a bike that must have once belonged to a Rock Rider. Kells is smashed up, her whole face more purple than the wound on Toast's cheek, but still able to cling behind her.

Mel and Smithy clutch each other when they are reunited. They remind Toast of Valkyrie and Furiosa.

They bring more loss with them, though.

“Found Keep, Maadie, and Val,” Smithy tells them that night after food and water. “Buried ‘em decent.” The women pull the air towards their hearts. Smithy hesitates before reaching into a pocket. She offers a length of black hair and a crow feather to Furiosa. “Thought you might want...”

Furiosa takes it. Toast watches. Capable, Dag, and Cheedo stare at the table.

Furiosa stands. “Thank you,” she tells Smithy, voice tight and formal, before she leaves their table and disappears for the night.

The remaining women are quiet until Toast realises Mel is speaking to her.

“You should have this.” Mel pulls out the gleaming Browning pistol that has been tucked in her belt for the last two days in case someone turns hostile on the new regime at the Citadel

It takes Toast a moment to understand that Mel is not passing it -- she is giving it to her.

“More than just our girl Fury to doctor: death's door War Boys; Pups with lumps: people half-crazy after been used for things no one should ever be used for.” Mel nods as Toast’s hand closes on the gun. “Most of my day is spent looking down at patients. No time to watch my own back, let alone anyone else’s.”

Toast nods her understanding. Although it’s strange to tuck a gun into the belting the Vuvalini had gifted her that night under the stars. Particularly here, under the dome where Furiosa and Angharad had argued so many months ago. Pragmatism and idealism had warred with each other until “no unnecessary killing” became their compromise.

That night they shuffle to their alcoves. Capable is the one who argued for returning to their former prison. "Imagine holding the first council meeting here, her words remembered in the paint." She is the only Sister who kept her room from before their escape, although she now sleeps in the bed that used to hold Angharad, WE ARE NOT THINGS still bright on the wall above her head. Gilly leaves the room she had been sharing with Mel and finds a new space with Kells. Toast has no doubt that Smithy and Mel will push their beds together the same way Dag and Cheedo have.

Toast walks towards her own space. She and Furiosa spend the nights in solitude.

There is no peace tonight for Toast. At first her thoughts are of Furiosa -- Furiosa and Valkyrie. She’d seen Valkyrie pull her old friend away from the group that night above the salt. They'd walked until they disappeared behind the lip of a dune, only re-joining the group as dawn began to grey the sky above them. Furiosa might have been holding onto hope the last two days, thinks Toast. Now it is gone.

Toast rolls over, feels where her first gun rests under her pillow and starts thinking afresh: about Fury Road -- all the things that went wrong on Fury Road. Not the big ones like Angharad -- that is for another time. Tonight it is the little moments that replay.

Toast remembers the feeling of vindication on snatching Furiosa's gun from Angharad. (Toast had been the only Sister arguing for Furiosa.) And then seconds later the sense of failure as Furiosa yelled for a weapon Toast didn't have ready. Instead it had been Max that had fixed it: shooting out the back window to save Furiosa -- to save all of them.

She remembers Furiosa trusting her again: placing a pistol in her hands to keep it trained on Nux; the confident pat of Furiosa’s hand as she left Toast to go help Max. It led to another failure, one that had no negative consequences, but still a failure. Nux somehow knew that Toast wouldn’t shoot him. Did he see it in her eyes? Her hands had been steady! Yet he’d leapt from the Rig as though Toast hadn’t been there at all.

Toast is preoccupied by thoughts of how she doesn’t know enough to survive the world she has been born into. Too much so to think of what went right. She falls asleep before remembering the part where she distracted Joe just long enough for Furiosa’s vengeance.

The next day she has a plan. It’s the first morning that Furiosa hasn’t protested being sent back to bed to recuperate after breaking their fast. Her face is closed and her eyes are red, and Toast is glad when she leaves them. Furiosa’s grief is more than Toast thinks she can bear to witness.

She turns to the four Vuvalini. “I want to be trained…initiated…whatever the process is. I want to be like you.”

“Why?” It is Kells who asks -- a question, not a challenge.

“I want to be ready for the world. I want to be able to protect myself.” Toast wants to be like Furiosa she tells herself. Actually she wants to be like Max: side-by-side with Furiosa; ready to take the shot she can’t; fitting in seamlessly to do what needs to be done together.

“This world could be the new Green Place, not the Wasteland.” Gilly suggests.

“The Wasteland is still out there,” Toast asserts. “And tomorrow War Boys could come here on bikes like Smithy and Kells did. Or if not tomorrow, in twelve days they could come around the mountains.”

The four women nod. Capable has smothered her grief for Angharad and Nux with the masses of motherless War Pups. Dag has Keeper's seeds and plans upon plans for what to do with them. And Cheedo has Dag, and the hope of a future to grow into. Toast is the only Sister that has not found a place to fit herself.

Her teaching starts immediately. Even at the Citadel, where they have started to explore and find caches stored by Joe, there are not enough bullets to spare many for Toast to practice. (The War Rig never made its scheduled stop at the Bullet Farm.) But first she learns the workings of her inherited pistol and finds enough ammunition to fill the half-empty clip. Soon she can strip and assemble every firearm they can lay hands on. She can reload swiftly without hesitating. By the time the War Parties are at the base of the mesas, Toast is at Furiosa’s side. She takes empty rifles and hands her freshly-loaded ones in their place. Toast may not be one of the expert marks who took down their attackers, but at least she helped.

She sleeps well that night.

She sleeps well the nights that follow too.

“Your hair’s getting long.” Cheedo observes one morning to Furiosa.

Long is an exaggeration Toast thinks, but there are light brown strands where there used to be fuzz.

“Will you grow it?”

“Hmm,” is Furiosa’s non-committal response.

When she returns to the dome that night, she is carrying hair clippers, so apparently the answer is no.

“Do you want help?” Toast puts down the book she is reading. She’s not sure who used to do such things for the imperators. For all she knows, Furiosa can do it herself.

“Sure.”

Toast follows Furiosa up the stairs that curve beside the glass, and into her room. It’s plain, although Furiosa has begun to salvage useful items to furnish it. There is a desk serving as a workbench, currently covered with tools and pieces for making a better replacement for her arm. The one she has been using since their return is little more than a vise grip on a pole.. There is also a chair and one of the Citadel’s rare electric lights.

Toast swaps the lamp's plug with the lead for the clippers and tries her best to act like she knows what she’s doing as Furiosa sits down. It doesn't pass her by that it's one of the few times she's touched Furiosa. Toast also feels the trust inherent in being allowed to do this at all. Furiosa's hair doesn’t look very even when she’s finished, but it’s short and practical.

“What about you?” Furiosa asks after running her hand across the stubble on her scalp.

Toast hasn’t had the luxury of choosing what to do with her hair since she used the blade she'd been given to shave her legs for Joe, and hacked off her braids instead. That hadn’t been a neat job either. She could grow them back now, have her hair the way she wants just for herself.

Toast hands the clippers to Furiosa and sits in the chair after the other woman rises.

She feels the smooth movements makes against her scalp and the flutters as different lengths drift by her neck and shoulders. Furiosa runs her hand over Toast’s head when she’s finished the job to sweep away the last clippings. There are no mirrors to look at the result, but Toast sees approval in Furiosa’s eyes and that’s more than enough.

There is never a formal declaration that Toast is Furiosa's deputy, but people start to ask Toast to relay messages to Furiosa. “Sister Toast, could you mention…?” Toast now attends meetings about resources and defences and trade agreements. At one particularly tense negotiation with the new regime of Gastown, Furiosa calls Toast "my second." Furiosa pretending she needs to consult is probably just a tactic to deescalate the tension, but Toast cannot help salting away Furiosa's words in her heart.

On particularly enjoyable days, Furiosa takes over from one of the other Vuvalini, requisitions a car, and takes Toast for a day's training. Toast learns not just driving, but how to drive fast, how to evade or attack, how to handle the various surfaces of the Wastelands, and mechanics for times when repairs need to happen on the fly.

On one of their runs out together, Furiosa tells Toast to park at the top of a hill and drills Toast with crossbow practice.

“Once you get three lizards without missing, I’ll upgrade you to bullets for your Browning.”

Toast is patient and determined. She has fired her pistol in practice, but only a few times, and not nearly enough to develop real skill with it. There’s a thrill when her third dart finds its mark. It’s followed by a different thrill when she sees Furiosa grinning at her. She notices for the first time that the other woman has dimples and an entirely foreign feeling swoops low in Toast's stomach.

Toast doesn’t sleep well that night.

Admiring Furiosa, wanting to learn from her, appreciating the time the other woman has spent on her training are things that seem so natural to Toast she never thought to question them. Can a change be so sudden? Like cresting a hill and finding a steeper drop than expected... that the way she feels about Furiosa has transformed in the space of a few hours. Or was she simply unable to identify what was happening to her until now?

Her life before being stolen for the Citadel had been nomadic. Her parents, her siblings, an aunt, an uncle, and some cousins piled into two cars and drifting wherever the Wasteland tracks took them. Toast has never known the feelings that are multiplying within her brain this night.

When she finally falls asleep, it’s with thoughts of futility. Toast might be developing an attachment to Furiosa that is deeper than infatuation. (She remembers Miss Giddy teaching them about the different kinds of love people could have for each other.) But that doesn’t mean that Furiosa will ever feel something back.

Over the following days, Toast manages to rationalise. She gets to spend more time with Furiosa than anyone else in the Citadel. It’s as much as she could hope for. And it’s enough to content her. The group of women have established patterns, and Toast can be grateful for her own private reasons that people leave the seat next to her empty for Furiosa to take when she arrives at mealtimes.

Time alone with Furiosa is more treasured than it was before. And it's accompanied by added significance if the other woman smiles at her or shares a joke. Toast tries her best to just accept Furiosa’s ease with her at face value. Furiosa relaxes to share conversation and laughter with all of the women who live together under the dome. It doesn’t mean that her appreciation of Toast is special -- at least she tries to tell herself that.

Her resolve is tested when she sees Furiosa emerge from the tunnel one evening to join them at table, placing the hair clippers on a shelf by the entrance first.

Toast’s hand runs unconsciously over her scalp at the sight and Furiosa nods at her smiling.

Everything seems heightened. Furiosa’s body seems to radiate heat on Toast’s left in a way that Capable to her right doesn’t. And if asked, Toast wouldn’t be able to say whether they ate bean paste or potatoes with their sorghum flat bread and greens that night for dinner.

Afterwards, Toast follows Furiosa, nerves and excitement both equally charged. This is one thing they do for each other that is approaching intimate, that has become private for them. When Furiosa sits in her chair, Toast finds her hands are shaking as she prepares the clippers. They’ve done this for each other many times, enough that Toast can clip Furiosa’s hair smooth and perfect. But tonight is the first time since Toast realised that her feelings have grown into something different.

Toast chides herself to stop making this into something it’s not. But once she starts, she is losing herself to feeling Furiosa’s hair between her fingers, the shape of her skull beneath her scalp, the warmth of her, the smell of her…tonight, the world Toast knows is narrowing to Furiosa alone.

When she finishes, she merely turns off the clippers rather than her usual direct “Done.” Furiosa stays in the chair for a few moments longer, as though she were waiting for Toast’s cue before rising.

Looking down at her with a questioning gaze, Furiosa seems very tall by comparison.

“Do you want me to do yours?”

Toast finds herself unable to answer and stares back until she realises that Furiosa is holding open her hand for the clippers. Toast places them there clumsily and sits down wondering if the heat she feels rising in her cheeks is showing.

It's nothing more than Furiosa wondering why you didn’t speak, Toast tells herself -- no different to any other time.

Except that it is different for Furiosa to undo the straps of her new prosthetic and hang it up before picking up the clippers again.

Toast is accustomed to gentle directions from Furiosa’s metal hand to tell her when to incline her head. She’s not used to the firm press of Furiosa’s nub resting on the side of her head as the small machine does its work across her scalp.

Her entire body is tingling by the time Furiosa slides the switch off, and Toast is certain she is going to embarrass herself by wobbling to her feet when she gets up. But before she can attempt it, Furiosa has put the clippers down on her workbench and returned to stand behind her.

Her flesh hand runs over Toast’s prickly hair and she can’t prevent the shudder that runs through her as a result.

“Toast?” Furiosa’s voice sounds as uncertain as Toast feels. When Toast doesn’t reply, she continues. “Do you…?”

“Yes.” Toast interrupts her -- because the only answer she can imagine giving Furiosa is yes.

The hand on her scalp falls to the back of her neck and Furiosa circles to stand in front of her. Toast can’t recall whether she stands up, or Furiosa pulls her, but she’s standing and her face tilts upward to complement the way Furiosa’s dips down. And then they’re kissing and it’s much better than Toast’s timid imaginings of the things she’d like to do with Furiosa -- more heady, more consuming than she dared to imagine such a thing could be.

She wraps her arms around Furiosa’s shoulders and delights in the noise that escapes their joined lips in response. And if it’s all too wonderful to believe that it’s really happening, it becomes even more so when Furiosa pulls their bodies closer and deepens their kiss.

They don’t stop. They edge closer to Furiosa’s bed without Toast being conscious of doing so. And when Furiosa lays them down and asks “What do you want me to do?” Toast feels anything but knowing, because she hasn’t ever known what there is to want from someone else.

So she replies honestly, “I don’t know.”

It doesn’t matter though because Furiosa understands. She was like her once, thousands of days ago, and simply says “Just tell me when you don’t want something then.”

Furiosa does what she always does with Toast: trusts that Toast will want to follow where Furiosa leads. And in return, Toast does her best to learn what she is taught and practice it at the first opportunity.

Afterwards as they lie together, Toast still feels small compared to the long, lean, planes of Furiosa’s body, but the press of lips against her temple and the whispered question “Stay?” fill her with acceptance as she drifts into sleep beside her companion.


End file.
